Transgender Confusion Goes Beyond Elementary School Bathrooms: In this 30 min. audio clip, Mark Yarhouse (Wheaton College) discusses the confusion that characterizes the current politics of gender identity and the church’s responses. “People experience legislation as an attack on the things that they believe in, and other people think that legislation is symbolic of the things […]

Overtime Pay Mandated for More Ministry Employees: The U.S. Dept. of Labor now requires churches and other ministries to pay overtime to full-time, salaried support staff making less than about $48,000 a year. However, for ministers of religion, “The FLSA [Fair Labor Standards Act] does not specifically provide a ministerial exemption, but some case law applies […]

This New Religion Is Causing an Existential Crisis at American Colleges and Universities, NYU Prof Says:The religion of fundamental social justice sweeping across college campuses is so alarming, intense, and dripping with such extreme liberal fundamentalism, says Jonathan Haidt, it has created an existential crisis for American academia while punishing heretics with public shame. In […]

A state-by-state look at proposals dealing with LGBT rights: Legislation has been proposed in states across the country addressing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, including some proposals that critics say would legalize discrimination. Many of the proposals would protect clergy, businesses and those who decline to employ or serve people based on […]

The Future Of AI: Is Something Different This Time? For classes in computer science, religion and ethics, business, and mathematics: the biggest shift in AI research has come through two developments. The first is the new capacity for machines to learn for themselves. The other development driving this wave of excitement is the ubiquity of Big […]

Few Protestant Pastors, Churches Prioritize Prison Ministries: Most Protestant pastors go to jail, at least for a visit, and want to help prisoners and their families. But their churches often lack the training or finances to run an effective prison ministry. The report comes at a time when incarceration rates in the United States remain at record levels. […]

Will the waning Barack Obama administration rewrite religious hiring rules? Veteran religion reporter Richard Ostling overviews two advocacy position documents on social service organizations, government funding, and religious hiring. His article serves as a quick inventory of topics and issues.

Inner Peace? The Dalai Lama Made a Website for That — For courses in psychology, world religions, philosophy, and health: the Dalai Lama and Psychologist of Emotions Paul Ekman (adviser to the movie, “Inside Out”) have created a popularized map of the emotional mind. The Dalai Lama wants to keep religion out of it. “If we see […]

The Campaign to Eliminate Hell: This NG brief update on the age-old discussions about hell can be used in courses in geography, doctrine, psychology, and faith and life. While religious philosophers have argued over the true nature of hell since the earliest days of Christianity, the debate has become especially pronounced in recent decades among […]

The Ken Starr-Baylor story shows how religious schools struggle to deal with sex assault: This coverage addresses the dual problem of how to balance the country’s encouragement of sexual assault victims to come forward with campus rules that restrict sexual behavior and, as a result, often inhibit open discussion. See also the discussion from Baylor alumnus Terry […]